Scarcely a newspaper in the country kept discipline. The New York
Tribune was one of the most criminal. Dissolution of ties in
every direction marked the dissolution of temper, and the Senate
Chamber became again a scene of irritated egotism that passed
ridicule. Senators quarrelled with each other, and no one
objected, but they picked quarrels also with the Executive and
threw every Department into confusion. Among others they
quarrelled with Hoar, and drove him from office.

That Sumner and Hoar, the two New Englanders in great position
who happened to be the two persons most necessary for his success
at Washington, should be the first victims of Grant's lax rule,
must have had some meaning for Adams's education, if Adams could
only have understood what it was. He studied, but failed.
Sympathy with him was not their weakness. Directly, in the form
of help, he knew he could hope as little from them as from
Boutwell. So far from inviting attachment they, like other New
Englanders, blushed to own a friend. Not one of the whole
delegation would ever, of his own accord, try to help Adams or
any other young man who did not beg for it, although they would
always accept whatever services they had not to pay for. The
lesson of education was not there. The selfishness of politics
was the earliest of all political education, and Adams had
nothing to learn from its study; but the situation struck him as
curious -- so curious that he devoted years to reflecting upon
it. His four most powerful friends had matched themselves, two
and two, and were fighting in pairs to a finish; Sumner-Fish;
Chase-Hoar; with foreign affairs and the judiciary as prizes!
What value had the fight in education?